Steve Naragon

Kant’s Life

This is a brief discussion of Kant’s life, including his early education, the cultural background of Pietism and rationalism, his university studies, his work as a professor, the plans for and responses to the three Critiques, and his attitude toward religion.

Kant's Career in German Idealism

Immanuel Kant helped launch “the next big thing” in German Idealism during the summer of 1791, two months after celebrating his sixty-seventh birthday. It had been ten years since the publication of his long-awaited Critique of Pure Reason, and the past decade had been filled with a remarkable output of writings developing Kant’s “critical philosophy,” including his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), as well as an important second edition of the first Critique (1787). Although the first Critique lacked sympathetic and competent early readers, support for his philosophical innovations widened steadily during the 1780s, and a growing stream of pilgrims began to make their way to Konigsberg, a city of fifty thousand souls lying in the far northeastern corner of Europe.1

„A Good, Honest Watchmaker“: J. C. F. Schulz's Portrait of Kant from 1791

Abstract Kants body offered a constant target for his own remarks, both in correspondence and during his lunchtime conversations. Several good descriptions of Kants body have come down to us over the centuries, as well as a number of visual representations, but these are remarkably limited, given his stature in the world of ideas. A new description of Kant, written by a novelist who visited Kant while passing through Königsberg, has recently come to light. It is reproduced here – in English translation as well as the original German – and earlier descriptions of Kant are briefly recounted.